Digital Communities Post-Pandemic: Social(ly Distanced) Media - Amanda Clark

This edited volume examines how communication within digital communities has shifted during and since the COVID-19 lockdown of 2020. It explores how pandemic lockdowns magnified the importance and impact of social media and other digital platforms in daily life, probing how pandemic communication may have permanently altered digital practices.

The book traces the push and pull between digital communications companies and their communities of users in the years after 2020, when the aftereffects of the COVID-19 pandemic were still fundamentally shaping discourse communities and communication practices. Offering a range of theoretical perspectives, the chapters present a parallel of pandemic experiences, communication modes, and community seeking/building.

Exploring post-pandemic communication change, social connections, wellbeing, misinformation, identity, and digital inequality, this book is a key supplementary resource for academics and students interested in these themes from across media studies, communication studies, digital sociology, digital media, and the digital humanities.